Excerpt: After more than three years of delay, LFN’s Blue-Light VIP Protection Case heads to an Equality Court inquiry on 22 October 2026. While billions are spent protecting politicians and other office-bearers, ordinary South Africans face murder, robbery and assault without comparable State protection. LFN maintains that no public office makes one life more valuable than another and that police protection must be available equally to every citizen facing the same danger. Read why the State seeks dismissal on technical grounds before answering the merits—and why this case must not disappear from public view.

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South Africa does not have first-class citizens in law. On the road, however, the State behaves as though it does.

A convoy appears in the rear-view mirror. Blue lights flash. Sirens rise. Motorists scatter. Armed police officers and high-powered vehicles turn a public road into a moving corridor of privilege. The person inside the convoy is not necessarily under attack. The qualification is usually office, status and a place within the political establishment. The people forced aside are the same people who fund the spectacle, but who must protect themselves, their children, their homes and their businesses.

Liberty Fighters Network (LFN) rejects the premise beneath that system. A politician is not a more valuable human being. Public office does not create a superior constitutional right to life, dignity or security. If the State provides specialised police protection against a proven danger, the same protection must be available to every inhabitant who faces the same danger, on the same objective criteria. If it cannot be extended equally, it cannot lawfully be reserved for a politically selected class.

That is the issue at the heart of Liberty Fighters Network v President of the Republic of South Africa and Others, case number 2023-068694. After more than three years of delay, LFN will appear before the Equality Court sitting at the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria on 22 October 2026. The inquiry will be heard virtually before Justice Holland-Müter.

The constitutional line LFN has drawn

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 begins with human dignity, equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. Section 9 promises equal protection and benefit of the law. Section 205(3) does not establish a police service for politicians and another for everybody else. It charges one national police service to prevent, combat and investigate crime, maintain public order, protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic and their property, and uphold and enforce the law.

The word ‘inhabitants’ is not followed by an asterisk saying ‘politicians first’. The police exist for all. Yet South Africa has constructed a permanent, enormously expensive protection machinery for the President, former Presidents, Cabinet members, provincial office-bearers, spouses and other designated dignitaries. Political rank opens the door. An ordinary citizen facing a death threat, gang intimidation, domestic violence, extortion or repeated violent crime cannot demand the same armed escort, convoy, advance team or around-the-clock protection.

A threat does not become more serious because its target has a title. If danger is the criterion, danger must be assessed equally. A whistle-blower, witness, activist, shopkeeper, farmer, teacher, taxi driver, councillor or unemployed parent facing the same proven risk must qualify for the same State response. LFN’s position is therefore direct: no office-bearer should receive a special State protection service that is unavailable to another citizen exposed to the same or similar threat.

The video that exposed the hierarchy

LFN instituted the complaint on 10 July 2023, days after South Africans watched members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) VIP protection detail assault motorists on the N1 in Johannesburg. Eight officers attached to the Deputy President’s protection detail were later charged. Their criminal trial was still continuing in March 2026. One officer told the court that he acted to protect the Deputy President; another reportedly accepted that the conduct visible in the footage was wrong and unlawful. The accused remain entitled to the presumption of innocence until the criminal court determines the charges.

The N1 incident was not the whole case. It was the moment the hierarchy became visible. Armed public servants travelling in a protection convoy appeared to turn their power against members of the public. LFN’s complaint attacks the system that creates and funds that division: a protected political class on one side and the people whom the police are constitutionally required to protect on the other.

SAPS reporting says that VIP protection covers the President, Deputy President, former Presidents, their spouses and other identified dignitaries while in transit. It has referred to a Risk Information Management Support System policy, Cabinet memoranda and a Presidential Protection Service policy. In 2022/23, SAPS reported in-transit protection for 71 national and 133 provincial dignitaries, together with 25 ad hoc and 48 foreign dignitaries. This is not a limited emergency response to a few proved threats. It is a substantial, permanent policing operation organised around status.

Billions for status while the public lives with danger

The hierarchy becomes harder to defend when the blue lights are translated into rands. In a written parliamentary reply dated 7 January 2026, the Acting Minister of Police stated that actual expenditure during 2024/25 amounted to approximately R2.291 billion for VIP protection and R1.418 billion for static protection. That is more than R3.7 billion in one financial year.

For 2025/26, Parliament’s Police Portfolio Committee recorded an allocation of R2.336 billion to the VIP Protection Services subprogramme. The entire Protection and Security Services programme received R4.342 billion. VIP protection alone took 53.81% of that programme.

For 2026/27, the parliamentary reply projected approximately R2.460 billion for VIP protection and R1.601 billion for static protection. Together, that is about R4.061 billion – more than R11.1 million for every day of the year. The Minister’s reply added that expenditure could not be divided per VIP because resources are shared among protectees.

That money buys far more than flashing lights. It buys trained police personnel, vehicles, firearms, fuel, overtime, planning and institutional attention for a class selected substantially by office. Every rand and every officer committed to that system is a public resource unavailable elsewhere. Parliament’s own committees continue to record detective backlogs, delayed body-worn cameras, deteriorating police stations and shortages at frontline facilities.

Ordinary people do not live in a low-risk country. Official figures for January to March 2026 recorded 5,181 murders – an average of 58 people killed every day. Statistics South Africa’s 2025/26 survey found that only 37.9% of individuals felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhood after dark. It estimated 1.5 million housebreaking incidents, 515,000 street robberies and an increase in assault victims from 363,000 to 408,000. Most victims of assault reported that a weapon had been used.

Those are the people the Constitution calls ‘inhabitants’. Their danger is recorded in millions of incidents, thousands of graves and the daily precautions by which families try to survive. Yet they receive a case number, if they report the crime at all. Political office-bearers receive convoys. LFN says that distinction is not merely offensive. It is discriminatory.

A case delayed almost out of public memory

The complaint was filed on 13 July 2023. Under the Equality Court regulations, the Clerk was required to notify the Respondents on the prescribed Form 3 within seven days. That did not happen.

LFN repeatedly followed up. On 20 September 2024, more than fourteen months after filing, official correspondence apologised for the delay in issuing and serving the matter and stated that four Equality Court clerks had been trained and appointed. On 26 November 2024, a directive said that the Form 2 complaints would be re-served within seven days. The record shows that the matter still remained unresolved for months.

The Respondents eventually delivered their responding affidavit in November 2025. A directions hearing followed on 28 July 2026. The Court did not dismiss the complaint and did not decide whether VIP protection is discriminatory. Instead, it referred five preliminary questions to an inquiry. That inquiry is now scheduled for 22 October 2026 – more than three years after LFN first knocked on the Equality Court’s door.

Delay protects the existing order. The public moves on, outrage fades, officials change, budgets grow and yesterday’s scandal becomes today’s routine. A case can be defeated without a judgment if it is delayed until nobody remembers why it began. LFN has refused to allow that to happen.

What the Court will actually hear on 22 October 2026

The Court is not presently scheduled to determine the final merits of the challenge to VIP protection. Instead, it will consider whether the complaint may proceed at all. The order of 28 July 2026 identifies five preliminary issues advanced by the taxpayer-funded senior legal team, led by Isabelle Ellis SC, acting for the President, the Minister of Police and the National Commissioner of Police:

• whether LFN has standing to act for its members and in the public interest;
• whether Reyno De Beer has authority to institute and conduct the complaint for LFN, and may represent it in the Equality Court;
• whether the complaint was validly instituted when its detailed Annexure A did not carry a separate commissioning certificate;
• whether all legally necessary and interested parties have been joined; and
• whether the Equality Court, or another forum, is competent to grant the relief sought.

Relying on these technical points, the Respondents ask the Court to dismiss the complaint before they are ever required to produce legitimate answers on the merits — answers for which they may need to rub their lucky charms particularly hard. Their senior counsel contends that the complaint should be dismissed, with costs, because LFN allegedly failed to establish its authority, did not place a proper supporting affidavit before the Court, omitted numerous affected parties and seeks relief that would impermissibly intrude upon executive power. Their heads of argument further claim that these procedural and legal objections explain why they have not answered the merits of LFN’s complaint.

That is precisely why the inquiry matters. More than three years after the complaint was instituted, the State has still not placed before the Equality Court the evidence needed to justify this political protection class. There is no merits answer establishing that political office, by itself, exposes every protected office-bearer to greater danger than ordinary people. There is no merits answer explaining why objective protection criteria cannot be applied equally to every person facing the same risk. The State seeks to stop the inquiry before it must answer those questions.

LFN relies on its Constitution, the decision authorising this case, confirmatory evidence from its National Working Committee and the specific standing and representation provisions of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000. It says its prescribed Form 2 was sworn, expressly incorporated Annexure A, and that any genuine defect in evidence, service or joinder should be identified and cured through proper directions rather than used to bury the case.

Why these preliminary questions matter to everyone

A ruling on standing is not merely about LFN. It concerns whether a voluntary civil-society association may institute a systemic public-interest complaint without first collecting an individual power of attorney from every member of the public whom it seeks to benefit. Public-interest standing would become meaningless if every beneficiary were required to sign a mandate before systemic inequality could be challenged. LFN is repeatedly required to prove its standing before the courts, while substantially better-resourced public-benefit organisations — such as the Helen Suzman Foundation, Black Sash and AfriForum — routinely litigate through senior counsel without, in LFN’s experience, facing the same institutional suspicion. LFN regards these organisations as part of what it describes as the “controlled opposition”, within South Africa’s public-interest litigation landscape.

A ruling on representation also reaches beyond one person. Regulation 10(9) permits a party in the Equality Court to be represented by an attorney, an advocate or a person of its choice, subject to the presiding officer’s power to address suitability. That reflects the very purpose of Equality Courts: they were designed to be accessible to ordinary people, including those unable to afford conventional litigation.

The affidavit and joinder objections are equally important. The Equality Court was not created as a procedural obstacle course in which one alleged defect destroys a complaint that can fairly be clarified, supplemented or properly directed. Nor can an allegedly discriminatory system become immune from scrutiny merely because many office-holders benefit from it. The legal test is whether a specific absent party has a direct and substantial legal interest that may be prejudiced – not merely whether beneficiaries prefer the privilege to continue.

The Equality Court can search for the truth

This is not an ordinary High Court motion in which the presiding officer must passively choose between two polished sets of affidavits. Equality Court procedure is deliberately participatory and has an inquisitorial component. The Court may ascertain the relevant facts, question witnesses, call witnesses of its own initiative, direct the production of documents, order further affidavits or particulars, regulate evidence and narrow the issues.

The Equality Act also allows the Court to order an audit of policies or practices, require progress reports and refer concerns about persistent or systemic unfair discrimination to a constitutional institution such as the South African Human Rights Commission for investigation. Those powers matter where the decisive policy, eligibility criteria, risk assessments, resource data and operational justification are held almost entirely by the State.

LFN’s ultimate position has not softened. The complaint asks for a declaration that the exclusive VIP and similar State protection services are discriminatory against LFN’s members and the other inhabitants of the Republic. It asks that the SAPS VIP Protection Unit and similar exclusive security units be disbanded within a period determined by the Court, together with alternative relief the Court considers appropriate.

The inquiry on 22 October 2026 concerns preliminary issues, not the final merits. That procedural reality must not be mistaken for a retreat from the relief. LFN asks the Court to reject dismissal, decide the threshold questions on the complete record and issue the directions required for the discriminatory system itself to be investigated and adjudicated.

The answer cannot be the word ‘security’. Security is the constitutional entitlement of the population, not a password by which political power escapes scrutiny. If the State relies on risk, it must disclose a lawful and rational system based on risk. If it relies on office, it must explain why office makes one citizen’s life worth more police protection than another’s.

This is what public-interest accountability looks like

LFN does not have a taxpayer-funded legal department, a fleet of State vehicles or an unlimited litigation budget. We are a voluntary association without gain. We do not charge the people we assist for legal services. Yet every court bundle, affidavit, commissioner, courier, print run, data connection, research hour and filing step carries a real cost. The record in this matter alone has grown beyond 360 pages before the Court has reached the substantive merits.

Public-interest work can be free to the public without being free to perform. Independence also has a price: an organisation that relies on ordinary people rather than political patrons must be sustained by ordinary people.

We are asking South Africans to look past the blue lights and see what they represent. Read the case. Debate it. Share it. Follow the inquiry. Ask why the people who make the laws and control the police have secured a protection service for themselves that the public cannot access on equal terms. Democracy does not require citizens to move aside for power. It requires power to answer to citizens.

Those who believe that this work matters can help in practical ways: share this article so the case cannot again disappear from public view; follow LFN’s updates; offer research, printing, technical, communications or other useful support; contribute equipment or services; or make a voluntary donation through the options on our website. Assistance may also be offered directly at admin@libertyfighters.org.

Support for this case is support for a constitutional line that should never have been crossed: no public office creates a superior class of human being; no political title makes one life more valuable; and no police service funded by everyone may become the private shield of a few.

On 22 October 2026, the blue lights finally reach the Equality Court. This time, the public must not move aside.

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